"What?" his mother half-gasped, close to dropping the wooden spoon gripped in her calloused fingers and losing it to the dusty floor.

"A friend, mom," Yoongi repeated from the kitchen table, dropping his head forward with the intention of hiding his pink cheeks. "You don't have to react like that," he grumbled, ducking his face into a water glass when he downed it.

"No, baby, that's great! It's great," she assured him, stirring her wooden spoon in whatever it was she was boiling there. It really must've been great, judging by the way she'd started to bounce on the balls of her feet, "I won't lose my this time. Promise."

Yoongi groaned, a long drawn out sound from the back of his throat. She didn't have to act so surprised. It's been years since anyone besides the two of them and maybe his grandmother had been through the doorframe, granted. But still. His mom was humming and bursting at the seams with some profound joy, and it was embarrassing. It sent red creeping around the shell of his ears, accompanied by the question, was he really that much of a loser?

"So...is that a yes?" he reiterated the question he'd asked almost minutes ago, searching her face for hints of doubt. His mom wore her heart on her sleeve, and right now it looked like it was smiling and screaming to itself, my son's finally not a lonely bastard.

"Of course!" she replied expectedly with a particularly high bounce on her toes. "He can come over after school tomorrow. I can make him a snack."

"We're not five," Yoongi reminds her through stiff lips.

"Yeah," his mom admits, her finger after she scrapes something red and thick from the end of her wooden spoon. "But I am."

, , ,

That Wednesday, Yoongi drove Jimin to his house in the car. They talked about a new dumb pun Sehun had dropped in chemistry that day, and the fact that Yoongi really needed to win the lottery so he could fix the passenger's window. It was damn cold outside.

There was a legitimate smile adorning Yoongi's face when Jimin trailed behind him up the cracked porch steps, where empty flower pots sat on either side of the door.

"Why's it always me that has to get you food?" he pretended to complain as he pushed the door open, holding it aside with his elbow. Getting stuff for Jimin didn't bother him much. If you asked him during the delirious hours past one in the morning, Yoongi might have said it didn't bother him at all.

"I'm like, mentally five," Jimin reasoned, stepping through the doorway with hands in his deep pockets. His hair was tossed in all directions, and his cheeks glowed a soft red. It had been awfully windy lately, paired with the bitter cold.

The door clicked behind them, shutting out twenty-six degrees and a breeze of death. "Well, I'll make you mac and cheese if you don't disappoint me," Yoongi promised, tearing his eyes away from a rosy-cheeked Jimin just as he started beaming.

"Shut up, peach," he sputtered in unadulterated joy that elevated his cheeks miles. "Really?"

Yoongi didn't have the time to process being addressed that way (peach?) or the earth-shattering shock on his friend's face.

"Boys," his mom's voice echoed down the hall as her bouncy footsteps trotted into the vicinity, and there appeared a woman with a loose periwinkle shirt hanging around her torso and her hair tugged into a messy ponytail.

"Mom," he declared like a caveman, struck into a one word greeting because he could sense her about to smirk like a loving idiot who was jubilated to see a teenage boy's face in her house that wasn't Yoongi's.

"You must be Jimin," her amused lips said, and she stepped up to him, her lips forming a loose 'o' when Jimin offered a small hand for her to shake.

"Nice to meet you Mrs. Min," he greeted, showcasing his sunshine smile, and little crinkles appeared by his eyes, folds in the silk that was his skin. Yoongi wished he could do that, that he could be that. Meeting new people was like ing rocket science to him. It was harder than rocket science.

Their amicable handshake broke, and Yoongi swore to god if his mom didn't stop smiling like that, "I like you so far. You're more polite than this little ," she announced, promptly wrapping her son in a headlock and ruffling his hair beyond the point of return.

Yoongi winced, trying to jerk away and stop the spasm on his head, but the woman was everywhere, "Mom-" he groaned.

"You're right," Jimin agreed, watching the display. In essence, ignoring his helpless friend, that traitor, "I am more polite."

"I buy you things and drive you around in my car," Yoongi reminded, which translated to some sort of cry for help. The sooner the better, too, because hell-raiser Mrs. Min had opted to squeeze her son's sides somewhere in between the words 'things' and 'around,' and Yoongi hated to admit it, but he was ing ticklish.

"True," Jimin confessed as his small friend squirmed for his life like a wounded animal. "I forgive you, peach."

He might've asked what in the for if his mom hadn't released him from her clutches just then. An indignant Yoongi fixed his glasses and his tangled mop of black hair, swiping it down, glad that his hands were temporarily hiding his pink cheeks. Whether they were the result of his embarrassing mother or the fact that Jimin had called him that nickname again, he had no idea.

"So you guys are studying?" asked Mrs. Min as if the past thirty seconds had never occurred. Yoongi wished they hadn't.

Jimin nodded. "I am the worst chemistry student in the known universe," he explained, the expected shame in his voice replaced with honesty, "Your son saved my life."

Mrs. Min sported a prideful look for her grouchy little angel with shaggy hair and startling bruises. "Well, good."

"You're welcome," bitter Min Yoongi muttered in Jimin's general direction, and in response, his friend wrapped an arm around him, hugging the smaller body into his side like a cub of some sort. Today apparently was everybody touch Yoongi without consent day.

"He's being grumpy again," joked Jimin, head tilted left, where Yoongi was, "I'll cheer him up."

"Roger that," Mrs. Min replied, turning on her heel towards the only hallway in their house. The hem of her periwinkle shirt fluttered behind her as if it wanted her to stay. "I'll be in my office if you wanna play Mario Kart."

Jimin's jaw dropped, and he looked to Yoongi's very close face for confirmation.

Yoongi's glasses shifted on his nose as he nodded.

, , ,

"Your mom's a badass," Jimin decided through his last bite of mac and cheese, back pressed into one of the couch's cushions while his legs folded oddly above him. An hour and a half proved that Jimin was sort of getting this chemistry stuff, all thanks to Yoongi, who had a way with words when he was with Jimin. Around everyone else, he might as well be an inanimate object.

"I guess so," he replied, swinging his spoon back and forth like a small pendulum.

"You guess so?" Jimin echoed, eyebrows lost somewhere in his hairline, "She can beat the out of Moonview Highway. I can't even beat the out of Moonview Highway."

"It's worse than Rainbow Road," Yoongi agreed. His best friend from freshman year used to argue with him about that, but it never made him change his mind.

Jimin hummed, rolling his body over so he was face out on somewhat thin, graying green cushions.

Yoongi was face up on brown cushions, swaying his spoon from side to side and watching it above the curves of his face. His reflection shifted with every gentle swing. It was amusing enough.

"Peach?" Jimin wasn't sure what kept making him use that nickname. There was an instinct in him somewhere that had started to form the term of endearment on his tongue, and he'd decided not to stop it.

Yoongi lent him his eyes for a second or two before giving them back to the spoon again. "Yeah?" he acknowledged.

Jimin watched the spoon too. It was mesmerizing for some damn reason. "How did you know?" he asked.

"Know what?" Yoongi replied with little movement of his lips.

"That you were gay," Jimin clarified, his hand hanging off the edge of the couch and grazing the carpet. Why was he asking that question? Did he even want to know the answer?

Yoongi was quiet for a long enough time for Jimin to wonder if he'd asked the wrong question. Or maybe he'd asked the right question at the wrong time.

But he tipped his head back in thought, shutting his eyes.

"I don't know," he mused, an almost direct path from his brain to his mouth. That never happened to him. It felt foreign, but not bad. "I just...I didn't want girls to like me. That was the first thing."

Jimin nodded, his cheek dragging against the cushion. That made sense. "What else?" he asked, gauging the changes in Yoongi's expression. Suddenly he was realizing that he did want to know. Small talk wasn't really his thing, so he should've known his motive for asking a question was to know the answer.

"I don't know if I picture myself getting married or anything, but..." Yoongi shrugged. "If I were to have any sort of long term relationship, I wanted it to be with a guy. I was more naive about relationships back then."

Jimin processed this information piece by piece. Not that it was all that groundbreaking; he was just learning Yoongi, from each angle and perspective. Every little side, the odds and the evens, crookeds and the smooths made a three dimensional person that sat there on brown cushions, playing with a spoon. Yoongi was teaching Jimin more than he was aware.

"Okay," he said eventually. "That makes sense."

"You're not planning to burn me at the stake or anything?" Yoongi teased, folding his arms behind his head. The spoon rested on his stomach now, rising and falling with each breath.

Jimin's chest felt like it weighed a few tons, increasing the force of gravity tenfold. "I'm sorry about the other day," he sighed, mashing the heels of his hands into his eyelids. "I feel like such a ."

"Don't worry about it," Yoongi reassured him. There was a slight smile on his face. "That was damn mild compared to how other people have reacted."

"Still," this sigh was deeper than the last, pouring out of Jimin's heavy chest like water.

Yoongi picked up the spoon from his stomach and - without warning - chucked it at the nearby blonde. It hit the victim's shoulder, causing him to twitch and make that typical 'ow' face, eyes squinting and lips hugging a ring of nothing. "Stop feeling guilty, Park Jimin," Yoongi scolded him.

That earned him a challenging smirk from his opponent and spoon impact in the thigh.

Battle and abnormal bruising on Yoongi's part ensued.

, , ,

Yoongi was on an air mattress in the corner of the room.

When the sky was pink, and so the coarse carpet and the old family photos were pink, they were on the same couch instead of two different ones. The TV was on, but neither of them paid it much attention.

"Can I stay over tonight?" Jimin had asked, head tipped toward the ceiling, tracing patterns with his eyes.

Something about the way he said it sounded weird. Yoongi wondered what he was avoiding, if anything.

Then small comments replayed in the back of his mind about parents. Strict ones that would leave vibrant lips in the form of sarcastic jokes, but Yoongi knew Jimin better than that.

"Yeah," he replied, not seeing why not. His mom was already obsessed with Jimin, so he was sure she'd let him stay. A fifteen foot walk down the hall and poking his head past the office door proved him right.

It was 11PM, and Yoongi was on an air mattress in the corner of the room.

Jimin didn't have the self control to not study him out of the corner of his eye, curled up in several patterned blankets that lapped at his t-shirt clad torso and the one spot where white fabric revealed a patch of skin.

This was what it felt like to be a burden, he couldn't help but think. His host was a second's journey away from the floor, and then there was cozy Jimin, draped across a mattress that wasn't even his, taking up every square inch.

"Yoongi?" he sat up as he whispered the name, craning his neck southwest going by the compass of his body. He was shooting for a clear view of Yoongi's sleepy eyes and the mountains and valleys of his blankets, but what he got was the wrinkled edges of the air mattress and a few tufts of dark hair sweeping across a pillow.

"Yeah?" finally came Yoongi's voice from inside his plethora of blankets, lethargic and almost gravelly.

Jimin reached to the bed's corner to drag away the duvet, creator of a space just big enough for five feet and nine inches of grumpy teenager. "Don't sleep down there," he urged. "Air mattresses some serious ."

"It's fine," his friend mumbled from the floor, his voice growing more muffled as his head sank miles into his pillow.

Jimin belly-flopped over the far half of the bed, (Yoongi's half, but he forced himself not to blast that fact on continuous loop in his head) edging himself back a bit so he wouldn't go careening to the floor. "C'mon, just sleep up here. I'll turn around," he promised in Yoongi's direction, patting his palms on the sheets like he was dog-calling the older to get his back in his own bed.

The tiest air mattress in the world caved into the floor when Yoongi finally sat up, rubbing one eye with the back of his hand.

He stared at Jimin through hooded eyelids for years, it felt like. "Why?" he asked eventually, and his lips seemed to pout around the word. Jimin tried to ignore it.

"Because that thing is like, half inflated and your back is gonna kill tomorrow," he reasoned with him, and Yoongi's eyes moved to the pile of duvet Jimin had created by pulling back the corner. It was a space just for him, and he couldn't say he didn't want to be in it.

"Get your up here," Jimin repeated, fingers curled tight around crumpled up bedsheets, "Or I will drag you."

"I'd drop kick you through the o-zone layer, Park Jimin," grunted Yoongi as he found balance on the bare floor instead of the air mattress, which was half flat and crinkled beyond repair.

His footsteps seemed so loud as he trudged to the bed, his hands flattened themselves on the mattress' edge, and Jimin listened to the springs groaning under the non-existent weight of Min Yoongi, in the bedsheets, next to a person who needs and deserves no introduction.

A few black hairs tickled the tip of Jimin's nose, and goosebumps crept along the skin of his thighs, knocking him just short of the teasing remark he was about to say.

"Quit hogging the covers," Yoongi griped, tugging the sheets' edge in his direction so his stomach was protected from the wintery air that spread from wall to wall, and Jimin didn't have the wit to do anything but stare at the back of his ing head.

His black hair became a little more curly as it cascaded towards his neck. Shreds of moonlight through the angled shades made it glow, and Jimin flopped over so he'd stop looking.

They exchanged a couple of drowsy thoughts in the dark, mumbling with nothing to hide. From most people, they had half their brains to hide, from everything in deep recesses to things that hovered just below the surface, not quite able to break out. But not in the darkened edge of Yoongi's bedroom. They were safe here.

"Do you love your parents?" mumbled Yoongi half into his pillow, when it had been quiet for some amount of time.

Jimin, blinking at the other side of the room, thought that was a weird question. Yoongi didn't normally ask those, so he was ill-prepared to be smacked in the face with one as he laid there on his side in the dark.

His eyelids sank. "Yeah," he sighed. "They just don't want me to be...I don't know."

"Yourself?" Yoongi asked him, shifting on the mattress, making it creak and give to the left side.

Jimin's eyes remained closed, leaving his mind clear to show him images he didn't like to think about. His dad selling his stereo when he used to learn dances in his basement, his mom basically putting him on house arrest after finding out he was friends with someone with blue hair, the pair hounding him to find some girl with straight teeth and a small nose and heart-shaped lips.

"I guess," Jimin conceded, and he hadn't realized until then how much his heart felt like a rock between his lungs, weighing him down towards the mattress. I guess.

"Well, that's bull," Yoongi told him with groggy conviction, "You're an idiot, but you're way cooler than everyone else."

Jimin didn't know why that made him feel so good, made the corners of his lips twitch. It almost scared him. It would have if he weren't here under this roof, probably.

"It's snowing," he changed the subject as he noticed, watching flakes create tiny shadows on Yoongi's windowsill.

Yoongi hummed a reply, only half awake and even less coherent. It was okay. Jimin was content either way.

Around three in the morning, Yoongi shifted, unconsciously inching his body towards the middle of the bed. He was flat against Jimin before long, the outline of his spine flush against the blonde's hoodie.

At first, a very awake Jimin felt a wave of some unidentifiable emotion in the pit of his stomach, arching forward to his full potential, creating as much space as possible between their bodies and limbs.

But eventually, a dull ache started to lurk around the small of his back, stepping up his vertebrae one by one, and he knew he couldn't sleep like this.

He let himself go limp again, his muscles relaxing into the mattress and into the boy next to him. Warmth and contact tingled across him from his shoulder blades down to his tailbone, and it made his lungs feel cramped in his chest.

Blinking at the wall until his eyelids were a weight too heavy to hold, he never moved away.

("So Jimin calls you peach?" Yoongi's mother had asked him the next morning through a monstrous bite of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, her lips milk slick.

"I guess," Yoongi had answered beside her on the couch cushions, where they'd been for the past three hours watching Planet Earth. His eyes winced at her subpar manners.

A smug grin spread across her face like watercolor, her cheeks still full of cereal like a chipmunk on a goddamn mission. "That's so cute," she remarked between crunches, earning only a dull grunt from her son.)

____

a/n
i love mrs. min she's so adorable

also this is the longest chapter i've written so far i think ?? my chapters are short as hell normally but this is like in the middle